Google Ads on Facebook: Via Developers

It’s no secret: Facebook’s platform might be the social networking development of the year. But so far, not very many have successfully built careers on developing third party apps for the site. Google might be doing something to change all that.

Google is actively recruiting third-party developers with applications on Facebook to run Adsense ads within applications pages, VentureBeat has learned.

These aren’t just any old Adsense ads, according to our sources — developers have been inserting plain-vanilla Adsense into Facebook applications since the developer platform launched in May. Now, Google is specifically building this network for advertisers who want to be on Facebook, and will let advertisers run their ads across all Facebook apps that sign up for it.

Is this kosher under Facebook’s developer guidelines? Venture Beat says yes: “Facebook has been clear about letting third-party developers sell ads on their own ‘canvas’ pages on the site and keep all the revenue — a loophole that the Google seems to fit through just fine.”

And Google may have an ulterior motive (no, not money):

Building relationships with Facebook advertisers also allows Google to test how to successfully monetize third party applications before it introduces its own developer platform. Google is apparently set to make an announcement on November 5 that it will give third party developers access to user data in Orkut, its own social network which is popular in Brazil and India but not in most other countries. To this end, it is also actively recruiting third-party developers on Facebook to develop on Orkut, we are told.